Pesto
by Selen Ozturk
I’m mashing garlic, lemon, pine nuts, salt, pepper, parmesan, olive oil and basil because my husband is going toothless and this is something he can eat, earthy paste. And the backyard is a cramped lot tufted here and there with basil, and weeds in the years since he stopped remembering to water. My husband is not only losing his teeth but his memory, but he can gum at pesto.
Sleepyhead
by Adeola Adeniyi
We finally made love last Thursday three days after her seventeenth birthday and then the following Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday. She had some pretty good moves, but she wasn’t a whore. No doubt our lovemaking was why Roxanne felt cool with calling my house from a police precinct out in Coney Island and begging for me to come pick her up. I can’t act like she didn’t have a few problems in her life, but her calling from a precinct still surprised me. My gut just told me Fernando Riveria was responsible for her trouble. I still asked Roxanne why they arrested her and she swore a cop only accused her of attempting to draw on a train car because he saw her sketching in a notebook with a magic marker. I sucked my teeth but agreed to help Roxy because I loved her. She loved me. I knew I’d remember Foxy Roxy, her black hair past her back, and that Pangaea-sized ass of hers for the rest of my life. Even in old age when I forgot everything else, I’d still remember that butt. She thanked me for being the coolest big brother ever and I hung up, brushed my fade, and drove to the precinct.
The Reader
by Maury F. Gruszko
A guy boarded the train at Delancey Street with hair the color of an old bronze and more of it than I’d ever had and there was even (and of course) one of those Superman locks cresting his forehead just so, insouciantly, and while I’d lay odds he’d never uttered the word “insouciance,” he obviously and enviously knew how to live it, leaning back with shoulder blades and the sole of a Vans pressed against the subway door and his body sheathed in black jeans and an artfully ratty black t-shirt emblazoned with the crazed remnants of the word MEMOREX. Anyway, I’m still not sure what he has to do with this beyond eclipsing the window where a person of interest I dubbed The Reader had existed for me in reflection since the 14th Street station, her image poised like a charcoal portrait as the tunnel shaded her features with cascading, slaty darkness.
My Doppelganger and I
by Andrew Bertaina
I met my doppelgänger at the Durán Barista, a small coffee shop of white stone, in the city of Granada, along the Andalusian coast of Spain. He wore a tweed coat with ostentatious patches on the arms and a pair of grey slacks. He arrived in the shop just after me, overheated but at ease. I’d been at the shop a half-hour after spending the morning strolling down the path that wound through the old caves of the Albacín, where I’d paused, and rubbed the slender necks of the stray cats, purring as motors, and took pictures of the distant Alhambra—stone towers and orange bricks against the backdrop of a milky white-hot sky.
A City of Jeremys
by Sagar Nair
There was a Jeremy who stole carrots from the elementary school veggie patch, and waved them around like magic wands, and poked people in the neck. There was a Jeremy who never drank water, because it made him feel like he was drowning. There was a Jeremy born with green fingernails. His coworkers trapped him in the elevator and peeled off his fingernails and served them on a cheese platter to impress the investors. There was a Jeremy who got hit by a bus. There was a Jeremy who had apples instead of eyes, and everyone spat globs on him. His brother poured apple juice on him and his laptop. When he went to the repair shop, the technician pretended to gag. “Did you know apples are disgusting?” he said. “Just letting you know.” He made him wear a trash bag over his head while he fixed the laptop.
Track 33
by Jean M. Kane
Always she reappeared, just when Zilla had almost forgotten about her. She was almost a feature of the station.
Zilla noticed only the time. Once again, she’d gotten to the Grand Central before her track number had even been posted. The long arm of the clock on her kitchen wall, a plate rimmed in red, shoved Zilla out more violently early every year.
90s Daytime Television
by Frank Jackson
9am — Live with Regis and Kathie Lee
Regis makes a phone call to a lady in Des Moines, Iowa. He asks her a Hollywood question and she gets it wrong. She’s pretty chipper about the whole thing. They hardly even address the fact she had no idea who played Cleopatra in the 1963 version of the movie directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Kathie Lee seems more interested in what type of dogs the lady has barking in the background. Kathie Lee’s son Cody loves dogs, but her husband Frank is deathly allergic. Mom carefully brings me a bowl of scalding-hot Lipton Noodle soup. She has also been watching the show from our 12-inch television in the kitchen. “Elizabeth Taylor, you fucking moron,” she says. “I knew that one. How come they never call me,” she says.
This Time Much Softer
by Kyle Seibel
She was bigger than her photos suggested, but McDaniels didn’t care. She had a symbol tattooed on the inside of her mouth and pulled down her bottom lip to show him.